Normally, hyperspace was a time of boredom. As not much could be done other than fall out of it, options were pretty limited for everyone. Except for when there is a massive power surge in the Engineering spaces, then you have to get busy. It almost makes you wish for boredom again, no?

Engineer First Class Sylvant was sweating like a dog as the reactor managed another jump in output. Already, he had managed to un-fuse two coolant pipes, and was now working to integrate them back into the cooling system. "Stupid gits." He muttered darkly. "There's a reason they tell you not to play tag with black holes." Indeed, the Star Destroyer had used a black hole as a slingshot, to set up for hyperspace. After escaping the New Republic ambush, the bridge remembered to tell Engineering that, well, they couldn't remotely shut down the reactor. And of course, the fuel feeds were jammed open, so even manual controls couldn't help. With two more commands, coolant began rushing through the reworked pipes, relieving the threat of critical failure (or, as he called it, an explosion).

Captain Llevian felt like sighing in relief. But he didn't, as he was an emissary of the Empire, and had more important things to do. Walking across the bridge on the command walkway, he asked the Astrogation officer: "Can we determine where we are? Or even where we are going?" The man shook his head, eyes still on the holographic console. "No, sir. However, I do think that we are going to drop back to realspace soon. Our slingshot maneuver was roughly aimed at a star, and now we are about to impact the gravity well. ETA is about four hours if the automatic cutouts are still online." A grimace stole over the Captains face, and he slowly walked back to his quarters.

The ambush had struck when the main convoy had stopped to pick up more supplies at an out of the way supply depot. Almost as soon as the three freighters had docked, they were boarded by Rebel soldiers, quickly overwhelming the valiant defenders. Outside, three squadrons of Y-wings had strafed the other Victory-class escort before it could scramble TIEs, and it had broken up, drifting in three parts. Two Assault Frigates then left the station, coming up on the stern of the Victor, unleashing punishing volleys into the stern shields. With no good option, the Victor had fled.

His Executive Officer followed him at a brisk pace, arriving at almost the same time. The officer cleared hi throat to get the captain's attention. "Captain." Llevian grunted at him as he sat down at his desk, which was littered with papers and other assorted detritus a working place collects. Several holos of his family were set up on the left side of the wooden desk, with his three children and wife smiling happily out of them. The XO gave a start as his captain swept off the entire desk, and sent the stuff falling to the ground. Noticing his XO standing at the edge of the room, Llevian leaned back in his chair and rubbed his face with both hands. "Do you know where we're heading?" He asked abruptly. The XO fidgeted, than answered "Our course is taking us into the Unknown Regions. We have every expectation that-" Llevian cut him off with a wave of his hand. How many ships do you know that came back from the Unknown Regions?" At this the XO's facade fell, and he also fell into a chair. "I know sir, but we need to try something. At least to keep the troops happy."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX I'M A LINE BREAK XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Four hours later, the crew of the Victory-class Star Destroyer Victor were holding their collective breath as the ship edged closer and closer to the shadow that denoted the star's gravity shadow. On the bridge, the tension could be cut with a knife. Seconds ticked past as the bridge crew held tight to their chair's armrests. Then an unusually loud noise cut through the air, and as one every person on the bridge, including Captain Llevian, turned to look. Standing at the turbolift at the rear of the room were three stormtroopers arguing over a candy bar, and the sergeant had stunned one of the other ones. The sergeant took the wrapper off, took a bite; then seemed to notice that everyone was looking at him. "What? You try eating the slop they feed us for months and see if you don't get a sweet tooth every once in a while." While everyone was trying to process this, and the stunned trooper was taken to the medbay, the "sergeant" removed his helmet, revealing Somta Llevian, eldest child of the Captain. "You do know I knew that you had come aboard. I was just waiting for you to do something stupid." The younger man shrugged. "You know they needed it. In fact..." Somta braced himself in between two backup consoles. "We're here."

The abrupt translation to realspace shook the entire ship and it's 5,200 man crew. Despite being braced, the Llevian in stormtrooper armor was thrown into a crew pit, while the elder had fallen onto him. All over the ship, minor damage was caused by the flutter in artificial gravity, evidenced by showers of sparks and small fires. As the bridge crew started their frenetic efforts to either fix damage or find where they were, Captain Llevian walked back up to the command walkway, favoring his left leg slightly. When he did make it, the sensor officer called up "Sir, unknown contacts at the second planet. Seems like three capitol ships and- They just jumped, and it wasn't hyperspace, sir." That caused Llevian to frown, but quickly smoothed it over. "Very well, then. Tell me when-" He was cut off as three shapes materialized off their bow, only a few kilometers away. Llevian could already tell that these ships had one job: to fight. There were only harsh curves and closely spaced gun batteries, with a crescent shaped head attached to an H-shaped structure. However, the third ship came in at the back, and was, while blocky, reminiscent of the Munificent frigates from the Clone Wars. Even as they watched, strike craft poured from to hangar entrances. Somta stopped counting when he reached eight squadrons. There were two main types: one that looked like a scorpion with it's tail cut off, vaguely, and the other was both far more numerous and was in the form of a delta wing, with several ports in the wings. Oddly enough, the second fighter didn't possess a recognizable cockpit. As they watched several flight of the latter type of fighters overflew the hull, seemingly checking the damage. After being scanned by the Victory's sensors, they showed no trace of a pilot, instead, there was a bank of computers where one would sit. "Remarkable. A working droid fighter. While we can tell there are transmissions from their mothership, they still seem to handle themselves ably." Somta commented. Another transmission was received from the unknowns, and it appeared it was navigation information in an unusual format. "Captain. I-I can't get a good read on this data. The course takes us within three gravity wells, and that's only of planets." Captain Llevian shrugged. "Get me a line to one of these ships. Video and audio." The communications officer turned and began trying to contact the other ships. Before long, an obviously synthesized voice came over the speakers. "The Admiral is on the planet at a meeting. We can talk then. However, your FTL systems is different than what we have experienced."

After a short trip in hyperspace, the Victor emerged over a terrestrial world, with only a fourth of it's surface area covered in water. Gravitic sensors indicated a high density core, and patches of metallic substances were scrawled through the mountains. Several obvious cities and mining facilities dotted the surface in strategic places, with an estimated population in the mid twenty millions. Just by looking at the buildings, Captain Llevian could tell they were built to survive either weather or attacks. In orbit, there were three large constructions, in excess of 15-m tons each, and hundreds of smaller satellites, mounting both civilian and military systems. As the escort led the Victory-class Star Destroyer to the largest station, civilian ships started noticing. Several strains of music were broadcast in their direction, along with the usual questions and blah of civilians. At the station, which bore the fading name of Norse on it's central module, a slip had just opened up to receive the visitor. The ship settled in, and it's engines quieted. Quickly, hundreds of mechanical figures started jumping to the hull, dragging large plates of alloy. When they arrived, what looked like hands rolled out of the way, revealing three pronged emitters, and started welding the new plates to the holes. Another transmission, this one with a different prefix, buzzed at the comm console. Quickly getting the commanding officers attention, the transmission was relayed to the Captain's comm unit. "This is Llevian. What do you want?" The voice over the link came back, fairly young and assured. "My office is in the command node. Would you like to visit? My assistant makes some mean coffee." The Captain looked over his shoulder at his son, who shrugged. "why not, it's not like we have anything better to do."

The weirdest part about all this was the thousands of humans going about their business on the station. Everyone was interested in the new ship, but they acted like they had seen odder things before. Somta had slipped away from the procession, and was making his way to a gold-colored module he had seen from the outside. He took the time to acquaint himself with the locals, and was astonished by their puzzled comments about his armor. It was his pride and joy, a set of Katarn-class commando armor, salvaged from a drifting wreck in the orbit of Coruscant. Even now, it was still nearly impregnable to conventional weapons. But these people? They said they had seen better, and even showed him a picture of the mans brother; in what seemed to be a miniature walker! This could not stand! He had to have one.

Captain Llevian entered the office, expecting, maybe, a governor's or other leader's type of place. What he found was gently surprising. The room was nearly bare, with only a row of desks with holographic projectors to one side, and a much larger desk, with a suitable amount of clutter to scale, on the other. The most interesting aspect was the green, floating crystal above the largest desk. When the man seated at the larger station noticed their arrival, he stood and walked towards them, hand outstretched in greetings. Taking the handshake, Llevian was reaffirmed of his misconception of the man. He was a soldier. The local let go of his hand, and grinned. "It's been awhile since I've had a true soldier come here. Usually, I have to go get them." As he was turning to sit down, he suddenly turned back. "where are my manners? My name is Matt Horner, of the United Species Space Command. Welcome to the Koprulu sector." One of the workers at the consoles turned and said "May I take your order?" with a completely straight face.

A/N: Well, that wraps up first contact. Kudos to those who can guess what the gold module is.